Author: Harvey

A couple of nice trades on what we used to call ‘dot com’ stocks back in the day. You know, when the internet was the new hotness and you could buy anything with dot com in the name and make a killing. That all went pear shaped of course, then the real internet revolution came along. Now almost any stock could be considered a dot com if we go by the definition that they need a website to earn the label.

Today’s trades are proper internet plays though. Businesses who are based entirely online and who couldn’t have existed twenty years ago.

First up, every traveller’s friend, Trip Advisor:

The stock took a trip south (sorry) from the open, and looked so weak and was subject to such selling pressure that the early entry was a no-brainer. Like a visitor to a bad hotel, I was out at the first sign of trouble. In the end there was more to be had, but I was gone with a four-figure profit in the bag and looking for the next trade.

The next trade happened to be dating giant Match:

This came along a bit later in the morning, but I’m glad I was still around to take it. After some faffing about earlier, traders clearly fell in love with the stock and started to pile in. We took a rapid ride up, and when the relationship started to look a little rocky I called an end to it and came out better off to the tune of $1,450.

Two simple trades netting almost two and a half grand between them. As always, there were plenty of other opportunities to be had.

All standard stuff, with a textbook entry and an exit at a logical place when the momentum dried up. The rapid descent in the price returned a $900 profit for about ten minutes in the trade. Those who hold longer than me could have taken more as the thing went further south, but each has to stick to their own rules. Mine are based on momentum, and whilst the chart can’t show the same granularity as the tape, those two big red volume bars followed by the little green one give a good idea what happened and why I got out when I did.

Next up, Facebook, because why not? It’s been a while since I posted a trade on FB.

The setup here wasn’t quite as clean as MYL, but it was clear enough, with a weak price getting squeezed. The trade, once entered, was over very quickly, lasting only about one five minute bar. As with MYL, momentum dried up, and we were already at an excellent exit, so there was no reason to hesitate on covering the position.

Anyone trading in the afternoon could have profited further from the additional drop after about 13:00, but personally I was long gone and sipping jippers on a beach (figuratively, you understand).

I don’t have time to post today, so no explanations or preaching about how taking the easy middle can make for a comfortable living. Just a quick chart of TSLA:

I will say that this was late in the morning for me. TSLA as I mentioned before, is a bit too pricey for me to watch regularly. But when my other trades were done I went back and checked the chart because of the way it was setting up, and was rewarded with $1,750 from a trade that lasted about a quarter of an hour.

Since the Easter break I’ve posted a few big winners, so I thought it was time to post a couple of bread and butter trades again, the sort we can expect to find every day. Because let’s face it, two grand profit from one five minute trade is, while not unheard of, not something we can hope to see every day either. It’s the bog-standard simple wins — the easy middles — that account for the bulk of a day trader’s profits.

First up then, here’s SFM.

It doesn’t get a lot more textbook than this. A standard setup for a momentum trade on a modestly priced stock that’s accessible to anyone with a margin account. A pretty uneventful price drop after the entry, then an exit at a logical place after it a) failed to hit an obvious target and b) momentum evaporated at the same time. $600 profit on this puts it at the upper end of the ‘bread and butter’ type trades, but it’s well within expectations for a regular trade.

Here’s another, which occurred a few minutes later, on UAA.

This trade was over much more quickly, taking less than ten minutes to produce $400. The exit was less clearly defined on the chart alone, but of course the chart never tells the whole story. For that we need the tape, and the tape made it clear that things had taken a turn and that it was time to get out. The chart hints at what happened with that whopping great green volume bar.

There you have it, two regular trades, neither of which was unusual, both of which were well within the realms of what we can expect on any trading day. Between them they netted a thousand dollars in profit (before commissions, which are negligible). They were far from the only trades like this, they’re were plenty more to be had…just like there are every day.

If you have even a passing interest in a) the stock market and / or b) electric cars, then you probably know how Elon Musk’s Tesla is being shorted like no other stock. Not just by the big players either, there are whole groups of people self-organizing on Twitter and Facebook researching the hell out of the company, analyzing Musk’s every tweet, and shorting the stock like there’s no tomorrow. They are convinced that poor management, endlessly problematic manufacturing, and an unpredictable figurehead (Musk) mean that the company is inevitably doomed.

I’ve nothing against shorting a stock. Indeed I suspect that if I tallied up all my trades since I’ve been in this game I would find I have a preference for the short side. But I would find it very hard to hold a short position overnight, let alone for weeks, months, or even years. When you trade long, there is a limit to your potential losses. Go short, and you can lose far more than your initial investment.

All this shorting activity, and Musk’s digital equivalent of verbal diarrhoea on Twitter, make Tesla a volatile stock. It’s high priced (above my normal threshold), but like Apple, sometimes it puts up trades that are just too good to ignore. So when this nice short came along on huge volume and momentum, well, it would have been almost rude to refuse:

The price was already looking weak after dropping through the previous day’s low, which it retested (and failed to break above). The big drop came in two lumps, with a pause in the middle. The first alerted me to the trade, and when the second happened on huge momentum, I was in. As we can see from the chart, the next bar pushed back on even higher volume. With more than two grand profit booked, I was out.

I’m not going to say this was a stress-free trade, because when a stock moves that much that fast and you have money on the line, the old heart rate is going to become elevated. But I will say that making a couple of thousand dollars in five minutes is a considerably less stressful way to short Tesla than selling off stock and sitting on your hands for months on end!

Here was a nice little trade on Disney, a stock I don’t watch that often, though I probably should. With speculation and the eventual announcement of their streaming TV service, plus a lot of M&A rumours and news, there’s always something going on. The stock is priced a little higher than my preferred range (I usually stick to those under about $100), but it moves nicely and predictably.

Anyway, here’s what happened on Monday:

A pretty textbook setup and entry, with a target that did not get hit. So instead I was out when it dithered around 138, taking 84 cents a share for a $840 profit on a thousand share position in a little over ten minutes. With such a liquid stock a much larger position would have been viable (funds and margin permitting), but I had money tied up in other trades.

For anyone who likes that sort of thing, the double bottom and rejection of the previous day’s low provided a nice signal to get in for the ride back up from about 11am. But you know me, I prefer the easy middle and the early finish!

It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted any trades here. As I wrote previously, we’ve had guests staying over the Easter break so I’ve mostly been away from screens, not trading and not posting. It’s good to take a break every now and then. It doesn’t have to involve travel, just a change of routine can help keep the mind sharp and motivation levels high. Doing the same thing day after day can become tedious. Trading properly is monotonous at the best of times. Taking time out can re-ignite the flame. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.

I started easing myself back in towards the end of the week with a few trades. Here’s core stock NVDA, which I was keeping an eye on mainly because it had suffered huge losses the previous day. When that happens there is often a good amount of movement in the next session. The price might continue to fall as more people see the earlier drop and jump ship, it might bounce back as bargain hunters jump in, or it could just bounce around consolidating. It doesn’t matter which way it goes, all we as traders care about is that there is likely to be a lot of volume and some decent range, especially at the open as the latecomers join the party, all of which adds up to easy trades. Here’s mine:

Given the liklihood of early movement following on from the previous session, I had no hesitation taking the earlier entry. The drop was fast and ferocious, netting a $1,400 profit in around 5 minutes. The exit was when the price hesitated around the (second) target, the first having been blasted through without a second glance.

A correspondent recently asked if it was possible to successfully day trade stocks without doing much research. The question was poorly worded, because it depends entirely on how we define much. But before I answer the actual question, I wanted to address the rather worrying subtext within it.

I mentioned yesterday that I have guests for the next couple of weeks so wont be doing much trading or posting. I did end up with some trading time available on Wednesday though, so although I skipped the pre-market research, I was able to squeeze in some quickie trades on core stocks. One of them was a bad mistake. Here was a 5-minute trade on NVDA:

This wasn’t a great setup and it’s more by luck than judgement that it worked out. If I hadn’t been in a hurry I would not have taken this trade. In my trading journal I rated it as a failure, even though it put $340 in the account. It’s never the financial result that counts, it’s all about the execution, and here I failed on almost all counts (I did exit well, as soon as it showed sign of weakness, so there’s that).

Another of my core stocks is another chip-maker, AMD, which produced a better trade:

That’s a much nicer setup with a much clearer target. It’s unsurprising that it produced a bigger profit, making $450 in around fifteen minutes.

I really am quite angry with myself for the first trade. I know I only took it because I was in a hurry and that’s entirely my fault. I was very lucky it worked out.

It’s all standard stuff here —a regular entry and an exit when it faltered at the intitial target. Then it made another move on even greater volume, so there was no reason not to take the second short. Again, the exit was when it faltered, thus taking the easy middle bit.

The two trades combined to produce $860 profit, all in under half an hour. Not to be sneezed at.

I should mention that I have guests staying for the next couple of weeks, so I will be trading infrequently (if at all) and posting even less frequently! It’s good to take a break once in a while.